This entire document was written under stream of consciousness. For all you people out there who do not know what that is, stream of consciousness is when the writer puts down on paper (or types on his word processor - it varies nowadays J ) exactly what is going on in his mind and does not bother with restrictions to a steady flow of mental ideas (this may be grammar, spelling, punctuation, etc.) This document is primarily written against Seasons 3 and 4 of the American FUNimation dub, although Seasons 1 and 2 of the dub were criticized as well.

Here goes my little rambling ... it's still significant and interesting so read on :) >> Even though the translations for Seasons 1 and 2 weren't always directly from the original Japanese version and even involved some corny puns sometimes, the voice acting and music still conveyed the feeling of DBZ (Americanized but expressed rather well none the less). FUNimation has hired some inexperienced new voice actors who began voicing DBZ characters after Goku knocked down Recoome in the Freeza Saga. In case you don't remember, that was the day when we all thought we lost our minds because the voices just didn't sound right. Although it may have had something to do with the psychological aspect of having the original Seasons 1 and 2 voice acting stuck in our heads, my mind is and had always open to changes, and the beginning of Season 3 was no exception.

The voices were horrible and much worse that the original American VAs. Freeza's voice wasn't much in Season 2, but it got even worse in Season 3, Vegeta's voice sounded like some drunkard who was deprived of sleep, and many of the other characters sounded too restrained (except for Bulma, who was given an even more ditzy voice). The screaming (and there is a lot of screaming and powering up in DBZ) and breaks in it, as if the VAs had asthma attacks or something (no offense to asthmatic people out there).

And another drastic change was the BGMs, which were horrible amateur-produced beats and incomparable to the Japanese score. Even though the BGMs for Seasons 1 and 2 were not so great, they at least limited the stupid Hanna Barbera sound effects and took the BGM more seriously. Now I had got to know DBZ through the Goku vs Vegeta fight of the FUNi dub and held the US show in high regards until Season 3 began. I almost threw up and was forced inevitable to mute the show :)

The Piccolo vs Freeza fight, for example, demonstrated the low quality voice acting. In that particular fight (and all later fights, w/o exception), the moans and groans were simply unbearable. It was obvious that the American VAs did not have the zeal and love for the DBZ show as had the original Canadian VAs. What I was thinking was - If you are going to change your set of VAs, you might as well change all the voices instead of instructing your VAs to try to sound as close as possible to the original VAs. If that had been done, I'm sure the dub would be somewhat more decent. Instead, it now sounds like a bunch of commandos or army men fighting their way through some trench warfare or something...

Anyways ... When the Trunks Saga began airing and Cartoon Network started having these semi-cool promos for the arrival of Future Trunks, I had some small hope that Trunks's VA would be more decent than the existing ones. He was, but only slightly. His somewhat decent performance slagged off as the Cell Saga progressed, however, and it soon was indistinguishable among the many grunts in the American episodes ...

It seems that the US wants to be original and change everything about DBZ other than its visual appearance. The only positive aspect about the show is the high video quality, but really nothing at all (the US bought DBZ from TOEI and it was obvious that the eps were high quality to begin with >> fansubs are just tapes poorly recorded by DBZ addicts who just want to generate income for themselves). The VAing should be changed, as Jap is not America's commonly spoken language, but the BGMs were modified as well. Now in case you don't know, the Japanese BGM's are retained in the Chinese (Cantonese), Spanish, French, and Greek dubs. I suspect that this is the case with DBZ dubs in other nations as well.

Instead, FUNimation began having this idea that DBZ would seem cooler and attract an increasingly wide and growing audience if they started using techno and rap in their dubs. This was first most noticeable in the Trunks Special dub and later in the Bardock Special dub (the latter of which turned out to be possibly the worse US DBZ full-length feature ever produced). The fact that they charge $19 for each tape is horrendous, if you consider what you are actually buying (something that is slightly better than sewage).

It is true that the translations in the Cell Saga and Cell Game is becoming very accurate, and in some cases entirely match the Japanese scripts, but there's always room for improvement in that department (as there are always corny lines inserted here and there to appeal to those DBZ viewers who have lower intellectual levels). As far as the voices go for the Cell Game, Tien and Piccolo's are by far the worst. Tien sounds nothing like the cool Tien we saw and heard in Season 1, and Piccolo sounds little worse than Vegeta (Piccolo and Vegeta have the same American VA). If I didn't know I was watching DBZ and heard Piccolo's VA say something, I would have thought that it was a raving pervert wanting to rape me :) , just to tell you how bad his voice is. Altogether, all FUNimation is doing is making DBZ more appealing to the average American, who has a relatively low level of intelligence and doesn't know any better. That way, DBZ would be made into a more marketable and popular show for little kids to watch (oh now isn't that cute?).

This, by the way, brings me into the subject of censorship. I do agree that certain scenes such as male nudity should be censored, but some scenes like Krillin blowing up in the Freeza Saga and Vegeta blowing up a Saibaman in the Saiyan Saga did not have to be cut from the airings. What probably shocks the more informed DBZ fan was the omission of the first few episodes of the series, when we are first introduced to Gohan and the peaceful conditions that existed on the Earth before Raditz's arrival. The episode with C6, the robotic friend that Gohan made, was cut off as well. If FUNi can answer as to why they did this, I would enjoy listening to their sorry excuses XD American DBZ is little more than another pop-culture show and not worth my attention or any consideration from the more honorable and tasteful DBZ fans.

I, for one, stopped watching US DBZ since Season 3 ended and did some online research into Jap DBZ shortly after Season 3 began. I can still remember how cool it was for me when I first viewed a Quicktime clip of Vegeta getting his arm broken fighting Android 18 and his transformation for the first time into SSJ (you can get that here, it was made available first on a cool site called Dragonball Z Kakarot Style. If you want to download high quality full Cell Game episodes in Jap, go here). The many fansubs, full episodes, and movie clips I've watched since I got net access has only made me gravitate towards the Jap version and look down upon the current US show as little more than the product of cow excretion (cow dung for you dumb folks out there ~_-).